Jidoka - Just Stop it - Boeing

When Sakichi Toyoda witnessed his mothers 'cottage industry' weaving work being rejected by her customer, it lit a fire inside him that still burns brightly today within the company that bears a similarity to his family name.*

It is said that the young man became distraught as he had realised that his mother had not been the victim of a lack of endeavour. What had happened, some time earlier but had escaped her notice, was that one of the warp (vertical) threads on her hand operated loom had snapped some time earlier. As this had escaped his busy mothers attention, her continued effort was all for naught.

As the boy grew and Japanese society evolved young Sakichi became a much sought after carpenter and soon started to create his own, improved versions, of the handloom that had supplemented his mothers income. As he was designing and building better looms along the way he invented a simple mechanical device that would make a snapped warp thread visual. When he moved that notion into mechanised power looms he created a device became truly revolutionary. Unlike all other power looms before, Toyoda looms stopped automatically when a warp thread snapped and thus defects could be averted in real time as close as possible to the time the defect occurring. This was a seismic point in the industry and was recognised by, the then largest loom makers in the world - Platt Brothers of Lancashire UK. They summoned him to visit and agreed to pay him handsomely for the rights to use his patent.

Jidoka as the idea behind the device was termed translates best to "Automation with a human spirit". In other words we want to embed humanity into our machines not the other way around. Of course this Jidoka device worked both ways, immediately people were no longer employed to babysit machines and could therefore attend to many machines and still fix problems in the moment.

Naturally short term thinking could have lead to machine operators fearing for jobs but the resulting reductions in unit costs, brought increases in sales and existing mills were expanded and new ones built often with hundreds of machines running unattended safe in the knowledge that defects would stop them automatically. Soon automatic shuttle load and visual management of supply them to machines gave another leap in efficiency. Still as is typical ideas rarely transcend sectors of our economies and what is the norm in one sector can sometimes take centuries to migrate to others. Often these leaps forward never make it out of their own niche application.

Having visited a lot of workplaces, I always ask people who are directed to watch machines at their workplace: "why do you need to watch this machine?"

I'll then ask: "At home, do you watch your washing machine?"

I also think of Jidoka at breakfast settings in hotels. I see people watching the toaster and think, haven't you got anything else you could in the meantime, instead of watching the toaster?

Fun though it is to watch these things and muse upon the light-hearted, recent events in the aerospace sector have shown us that although the idea behind Jidoka is embedded in modern equipment at work and in homes the ideas and beliefs and habits around it are not.

Ironically I started my working life and spent two decades in the aerospace sector. From day one safety and airworthiness were mantras drilled into you as a maker of these craft. Every part I made, every assembly I worked on is traceable back to me just like the materials used. As a sixteen year old when I started my apprenticeship I was told that "I should never yield to any pressure whatsoever to ship defective product". I would like to say that the founder of our firm: Robert Blackburn of Blackburn told me that personally, however his death had been some time earlier. Neverthelesss, on this matter, he was still being quoted decades after.

So what do us "aircraft folk" think of the current curse at Boeing?

How can this company, even after being taught Just-In-Time and Jidoka by ex-Toyota executives decades ago, not stick with a behaviour that was so diligently taught, so expensively forgotten, come to light through tragedy and bad publicity?

I'm going to keep it simple:

You either believe that stopping to fix things as you go is better than delivering illusions 'on-time' or you don't.

In the enlightened world it's: Safety, Quality, Time & Financials in that order. The problem seems to be that we still keep churning out professional leaders who see that order in reverse.

In our modern Just-In-Time, and Jidoka equipped work flows, complete with cords to stop the flow, why or why do we keep handing the management of them to people indoctrinated in last centuries "hurry up and never stop the line".

This cannot continue.

Yes in this article I am appealing to emotion but make no mistake it is also firmly underpinned by logic.

If you really think about:

Doing nothing is better than doing things that compromise safety.

Doing nothing is better than producing poor quality.

Doing nothing is better than creating waste.

The other side of this coin however is key. When you genuinely have nothing to do, do improvement to ensure all of the key performance dimensions are being produced on-time and to cost.

The more we stop as teams and solve problems to root cause, thus improving the way we do things and ensure those problems cannot happen again, the better things will get for all.

Most organisations can, over time, under good leadership and guidance, improve team based problem solving such that it can happen in the tempo of real time.

Jidoka is not just a concept, it's a deep commitment that has to run right through this evolution of work into a higher form.

Don't attempt it if you are not committed to this foundational idea.

*The Toyoda family name was changed to 'Toyota' for the car company that Sakichi's son, Kiichiro Toyoda built. He did so with seed capital from the patent deal done by his father with Platt Brothers of Lancashire.

That's how deep that principle runs.